Sam Testalamuta leaves Glebe Coroners Court during the inquest into the disappearance of Richard Sajko.

Seven years earlier, 21-year-old Richard Sajko vanished the night before Mother’s Day, just days before he was due to give evidence against Mr Testalamuta in a criminal trial.

Yet an inquest into Mr Sajko’s suspicious disappearance has been told that police have never made any arrests or had any breakthroughs more than two decades after Mr Sajko was last seen leaving his job at Avis Car Rentals in Mascot.

The pair had given police conflicting explanations as to how it came to be in their possession and Mr Sajko had confided to his mother that Mr Testalamuta was pressuring him to change his statement before their trial and had threatened to blow up his car and kill him.

Penelope Wass, SC, representing the Sajko family, told the inquest that Mr Testalamuta was ‘‘more than capable’’ of shooting a man because he had done so in 2002 in strikingly similar circumstances.

‘‘You certainly knew that your son is more than capable of doing that ... to another human being,’’ she asked Mrs Testalamuta.

‘‘No,’’ she replied.

‘‘He’s done it before, why wouldn’t he do it again?’’ Ms Wass asked.

‘‘Is it possible that you don’t really know what your son is capable of?’’

‘‘No,’’ she replied, adding that the 2002 incident was ‘‘different’’ because the victim pulled a gun on her son first, a fact that was not in the agreed facts of the matter.

The day after Mr Sajko disappeared, a man called Sam answered Mr Sajko’s mobile phone, a cousin told the inquest.

Another man, John Tuiletufuga, was also detected using the phone.

When police raided the Tuiletufuga home in 1995, Joseph and Pauline Tuiletufuga asked their son why the police had come looking for him in relation to the Sajko case.

He told his mother that he had killed a man, the inquest heard. His father, a pastor, took him to Ashfield police station and asked to speak to the lead investigator, Detective Sergeant Frank Mennilli, but he was told to go home and come back the next day.

‘‘I don’t know why they released him back,’’ Mr Tuiletufuga said.

‘‘I offered my very best to help the investigation.’’

The inquest into Mr Sajko’s disappearance is examining whether serious errors by the police allowed the case to go unsolved for two decades and possibly allow a murderer to remain free.

It is most likely that Mr Sajko met with foul play, yet Mr Mennilli formed an early conclusion that there was not enough evidence to suggest foul play, the inquest has been told.

Mr Mennilli, now an assistant commissioner, said that Mr Tuiletufuga denied making the confession and said he just did it to stir his parents.

He told the inquest there was no evidence to support the confession.

‘‘I certainly had a number of suspicions but I certainly had no evidence to support those suspicions,’’ Mr Mennilli said, adding that it was an unsolved case that had ‘‘broken’’ his heart.